


The Bed

by SophiaCatherine



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Multi, Sharing a Bed, Soulmates, chidi anagonye's anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 10:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16910988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophiaCatherine/pseuds/SophiaCatherine
Summary: Chidi's really very upset about the mix-up that has left him with two soulmates and one bed in a tiny house full of clown decor. And he didn't expect his soulmates to be anything like this.





	The Bed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rivulet027](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivulet027/gifts).



> For the Yuletide fic exchange. I hope it meets your expectations, giftee - and happy Holidays!

  1. ****The Arrival****  



Chidi is pacing around the living room.

The clown paintings in his new house are making him nervous. Apparently Chidi doesn’t get his own house, for reasons of—well, Michael said something about resources. Which seems a bit odd, but Chidi doesn't know how things work around here.

What he does know is that he doesn’t like those clown paintings.

“Eleanor,” he says.

The speed of his pacing is picking up, entirely without his permission.

Eleanor is lounging on the couch reading something vapid and mindless.

 _Oh, come on now, Chidi,_ he thinks. _That’s judgmental._  That glossy cover with the half-naked woman on it might have serious news articles inside. It probably doesn’t, but he should give Eleanor the benefit of the doubt. He doesn’t really get this soulmate thing, but she seems… nice.

Eleanor looks up. “Yeah, buddy! What can I do you for?”

He feels his lips stretch into a grimace. “Do you think we’re allowed to… change… the decor?”

Oh sure, Michael _says_  they’re living in the perfect house for them. But, to Chidi, pacing around the garish living room while also attempting to stay as far away as possible from any of the clown images, it looks like the perfect house for _Eleanor_. This is the Good Place. Why doesn’t Chidi get his own perfect house?

 _Oh, come on now, Chidi. You’re being ungrateful._ Good Place or not, he can’t expect to turn up here and just get everything he wants. That would be theologically and eschatologically inconsistent, for a start. How could you have an afterlife that was simultaneously perfect for everyone, with all their competing values and interests? You’d have to have a different Place for each person, and that sounds… well, actually that doesn’t sound so bad, now that he thinks about it.

_Oh, come on now, Chidi. Surely you can learn to be sociable._

He doesn’t know if he can learn to be sociable.

Eleanor frowns up at the clown paintings, just for a second, then beams at him. “But I love the clown paintings! They were put there just for me.” She returns her focus to the magazine. “Isn’t the Good Place just _fantastic_ , Chidi?”

Chidi stops pacing so he can look at her more closely. There’s a forced note in her voice, as though something’s wrong. He doesn’t think he knows her well enough to ask her if everything’s okay, though.

Does he?

This might be ‘newly arrived in the afterlife’ stress. Yes. That’s definitely a potentially very real psychological disorder. He might be the first person to have it. A scientific breakthrough. Being a breakthrough sounds better than being a freak, so he’ll go with that. He’ll have to ask that A.I. about it—Janet, wasn’t it? He wonders if there’s a counselor in the Good Place. Has anyone else ever got to the Good Place and needed a counselor? Is it just him? Is Chidi the biggest freak ever to arrive in the Good Place? Will they have to employ an… is _angel_  the right term? And train them in psychology? Chidi co-wrote a paper with a psychologist once. Maybe he could help. No, wait, that would probably raise an ethical conflict of interest. Never mind.

Chidi is almost relieved when Michael sticks his head around the door, interrupting an increasingly spiralling train of thought that is never finding its way out of the tunnel now. “Coo-ee,” Michael says, in that cheerful tone that somehow always makes Chidi feel like he’s done something terribly bad, even though that’s probably not the intention. Almost certainly not. Is it? “How are you settling in?” Michael practically skips in through the front door. He’s pulling someone in behind him, holding the hand of—

Oh.

Chidi is usually uncomfortable objectifying women. He likes to meet a person, of any gender, and attempt to judge them on more meaningful things than the way they look. But the woman clinging onto Michael’s hand, her eyes wide, her mouth forming a silent little _oh_ , is truly beautiful.

Although, really, what is beauty? Before the Good Place, Chidi would have said that a beautiful soul is one who is interested in philosophy, and art—though maybe not clown paintings—and cares about other people and living an ethical life. All the same, though, this woman really is quite, quite beautiful.

“Hello!” she says, letting go of Michael’s hand and casting her eyes around the room. A slightly downcast expression follows. “Well, now, isn’t this just… cozy?”

Michael pats the woman on the back. “Eleanor, Chidi, meet Tahani.” He coughs nervously. “And, really, I don’t know how to tell you this, but there’s been a mix-up somewhere. I’m awfully sorry. And also incredibly happy for you!”

Eleanor has finally looked up from her magazine, swinging her legs around. Tahani has apparently caught her attention too. There’s a little smile on Eleanor’s face, and it’s really rather—beguiling. “Sorry and happy for us _why,_  Michael?” Eleanor asks, smiling that little smile at Tahani all the while.

Michael giggles, with a slight note of desperation. “Like I said. There’s been a mix-up. Eleanor, as I told you and Chidi before, you two are soulmates. But it turns out that—” he pushes Tahani forward— “so is Tahani.”

Eleanor wrinkles her brow, though she hasn’t stopped gazing at Tahani. “So is Tahani… what, Michael?”

“Your soulmate! Oh and she’s gonna have to live here with you as well. There’s still a minor problem of resources, you know how it is, shouldn’t be forever. And also, we really like you soulmates to bond.” He waves between the three of them. “Well, I’m off. Big dinner to get ready tonight. You three get to know each other.” And with that, he’s gone.

Chidi listens to his disappearing whistling until he can’t hear him anymore.

Glancing between a bemused but delighted-looking Eleanor, and a Tahani who is now staring, appalled, at her surroundings, Chidi sighs.

He forgot to ask Michael about the clown paintings.

 

  1. **The Bed**



“Day 1 in the Soulmate House,” Eleanor is actually saying. Out loud. To amuse herself, apparently. “The new roommates have yet to figure out where they’re sleeping…” She trails off, an expression of concern suddenly crossing her face. “Chidi?”

He looks up from his book.

Apparently, around here you just ask Janet for a book, and she makes it appear for you. This is nice. He’s comfort-reading an old favourite—Hegel’s _Phenomenology of Spirit_.

He fixes on a smile. “What can I help you with, Eleanor?”

“Have you figured out where the bedrooms are, yet?”

Chidi chooses a point on the ceiling to look at, since it wouldn’t be polite to be staring just as she appears. “Janet,” he says.

She forms out of thin air, accompanied by her signature  _ping_. “Good evening, Chidi,” she says, delightfully polite as ever.

“Good evening, Janet. Can you tell us where to find the bedrooms?” He looks around the house. “There only seems to be this one big living space. Are the bedrooms maybe in another house?” he asks hopefully.

“Oh no,” she says, a laugh in her voice. She approaches the biggest and most terrifying clown painting in the house, right at the front of the living area, and presses a button. It’s a screen.

A screen that slowly rises to reveal… one bed. “There’s the bedroom,” Janet says, ever so helpfully.

 _“The_  bedroom,” Tahani says, from right behind him. He tries not to jump, and fails, turning around to look at her. She’s wearing a very nice pair of cream silk pajamas. She really does look good in everything. “Uh, Janet, dear,” she says, “is there only one bedroom?” And then, slowly, a look of horror rises across her face, like a clown painting rising to reveal a single bed. “Janet, dear, is there only… one _bed?”_

“That’s right.” Janet smiles brightly at them. “If you need anything else, just call!” And she pops back into nothingness again.

Tahani and Chidi are staring at each other. Chidi suspects his face looks something like Tahani’s—deeply appalled.

“Hey guys, what’s the skinny on the bed sitch?” Eleanor wanders in front of them. She already has bed hair, which seems odd. There’s a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth and she’s wearing clown pajamas, presumably provided for her by the Good Place. She really must love those clowns.

“There’s only one bed,” Chidi says slowly.

“All right!” Eleanor laughs and jumps up on the platform. And then she sits on the bed, bouncing up and down on it. She notices them staring and pats the bed next to her. “It’s big enough for three! What’s your stress, guys?”

Chidi finds that he’s frozen to the spot, which is concerning. Like everything else about this situation. “Eleanor… I’m glad that you’re happy, and that the Good Place is everything you’ve ever wanted, but…” He takes a deep breath. “I can’t share a bed with two other people.”

Eleanor frowns at him. “Aren’t you from, like, Africa, man?”

He folds his arms and blinks firmly at her. “That is the continent I come from, yes. Are you about to say something offensive, Eleanor?”

Her eyes widen in a deer-caught-in-headlights look. “No way! I just…” She seems to give that line of questioning up as a bad job, so at least Chidi can be relieved about that. “Just, come on, man! This is so much _fun!”_

Tahani, meanwhile, is backing away from the bed slowly. Spinning around, Chidi sees all the signs of someone even more panicked than him, wide-eyed and with her hand resting on her quickly rising and falling chest, and he raises his hands in an attempt at a calming gesture. “Are you okay, Tahani?”

She’s shaking her head. “No, Chidi, I am not okay! First of all they tell me I have to  _share_  my soulmates, and that they’re _you two.”_  She gestures, with an expression of mild disgust, between Chidi and Eleanor, who’s still bouncing on the bed. “And  _then_  they say I have to live in this _tiny house_  with you two.” If her voice keeps rising at that rate, soon only dogs will be able to hear her. “And then I find out that there’s only one bed, and I _can’t,_ Chidi, I  _simply can’t!”_ She emphasizes the last word with an actual stomp of her foot, which is childish, and absolutely not adorable. It absolutely isn't. He realises that he’s staring at her, tries to course correct and look anywhere less impolite, but she seems to be consumed with other things. She’s reaching down to pick up her bag, as though she’s about to run. Chidi doesn’t know much about designer brands, but it looks like one. Amazing what some people have already requested from Janet.

Eleanor has got down from the bed and is inching towards Tahani. “Hey, hon, it’s okay…”

Chidi swallows. His stomach has started to do The Thing. He’d always thought that was irritable bowel syndrome, but apparently it’s now happening in the Good Place, where there isn’t supposed to be any disease and definitely no digestive complaints, so, what do you know, it turns out it was just anxiety all along.

He locks himself in the bathroom for an hour, wondering why anyone even needs to use the bathroom at all in the Good Place. Just one more question he won’t ask.

When he gets back out, Tahani has taken the sofa and is staring up the ceiling, and Eleanor is already out and snoring on the bed.

Chidi finds a convenient spot on the floor and asks Janet to get him something to sleep on. And she apparently only has access to an air mattress, even though they’re still in the Good Place. At least it’s in keeping with all the rest of the weirdness around here.

The air mattress squeaks all night. In the morning it has mostly deflated, leaving him lying on the hard, cold floor.

 

  1. **Breakfast**



Time passes—a few weeks.

Tahani grows a rose garden outside their little yellow house.

She still sleeps on the couch, and Chidi still sleeps on the floor.

But they’ve started making each other breakfast in the mornings.

Eleanor and Chidi both spend a lot of time listening to Tahani’s never-ending stream of consciousness, which is starting to sound a little less self-absorbed than it once did. Sometimes she gets this secret little smile she reserves just for Eleanor and Chidi. And sometimes, when she smiles like that and lets her guard down, and talks like there’s fire in her soul, Chidi is captivated.

They laugh at Eleanor’s stories about her old life. Which, now that Chidi’s getting to know her better, really are quite amusing. Sometimes, when Tahani’s talking, Eleanor looks at him across the table with a little, knowing look. It’s terrifying, but also rather… nice.

Some days Jason joins them, now that they know his secret and he’s speaking to them. If only to them.

“I think he’s lonely,” Tahani says one morning, gazing at the door long after he leaves.

Eleanor’s clearing up the plates. She stops to look up at Tahani, and—oh. Chidi sees something on her face that he’s never seen there before. “Lonely?” she says, her voice full of sadness. “In the Good Place?”

Tahani nods, her eyes fixed on the door Jason just departed through. “He doesn’t have a soulmate. He says there was another mix-up.”

“Well then,” Eleanor says, on a determined note, “he’s just gonna have to come and be our soulmate. There’s room for one more, right?”

Tahani frowns. “But how can he be ours? That sort of thing is all sorted out before we get here, isn’t it?” She does a grand, two-handed waving gesture. “Souls brought together by the universe. Or something.”

Eleanor’s face is full of excitement now. “Right! Or something!” She looks over at Chidi, who has to swallow at determination and care on her face. “Who even knows what soulmates are? Milly and Tom next door say they’re platonic soulmates. And Emily’s decided her soulmate is a cat. And Vicky—well, okay, Vicky made Sarah cry and then Sarah asked Michael if she could live in a boat on the lake, but let’s chalk that one up to Vicky being weird.”

Tahani has gone back to pushing a cold piece of toast around her plate. “And, uh, what are _we,_  exactly?” Her words are clipped, extra British. Chidi doesn’t know if she means him, or Eleanor, or both of them. That’s uncomfortable.

Eleanor, though, doesn’t seem fazed. “Oh, who knows? Guess we’ll find that out as we go! But even if we’re romantic soulmates, or two of us are and the other isn’t… Well, where’s the rule that says Jason can’t be our platonic soulmate too?” She turns to the sink, piling plates into it. “If he wants to be.”

“Eleanor,” Chidi says, “I don’t think you can just decide who gets to be soulmates.”

She spins back around to look at him. “Why not?”

And, well, he doesn’t have an answer to that. She’s just so excited. And so—happy.

 

  1. **The Rose Garden**



“I’ve been thinking,” Eleanor says from behind him, and this time he doesn’t jump.

Chidi’s sitting on the bench that Tahani has recently installed in the rose garden outside the house. (“Because I want to make it look _nice,_  my darlings!”)

He pats the seat next to him. “What have you been thinking, Eleanor?”

She slides onto the seat, beaming at him. “I want to invite Jason to live with us.”

He groans, his head lolling over the back of the low bench. “Eleanor,” he whines. “You’re aware that I already sleep on the floor?”

“Right!” She claps her hands twice. “Which means there’s all that free real estate in the bed. I mean, since you and Tahani keep refusing to share it with me…” She waggles her eyebrows at him, in a way that is probably meant to be suggestive.

He raises an eyebrow back at her, putting his book down on the bench. “Explain.”

She pouts. It’s too adorable. “He’s all alone in that big house. Michael says they designed it thinking he'd have a soulmate to share it with, and then he didn’t, and he’s lonely, and it’s just so sad.”

“So why can’t we move into the big house?” Chidi asks.

She shakes her head. “Believe me, that was the first thing I asked Michael. He said—” She does air quotes followed by a terrible impression of him. “‘I can’t approve that, Eleanor, because everyone else would want to move to the bigger houses, and it would cause all kinds of chaos, and then what would we do?’ But, great news, he says we can move as many people into this tiny hellhole as we want to!”

She sounds far too cheerful about that, and he sighs. “I don’t doubt it, somehow. You know, if I didn’t know that he was basically an angel, I’d think that man was here to torture us.”

She laughs, clapping him on the shoulder. “Oh, _you.”_ She removes her hand from his shoulder, always so kindly aware of his nervous nature, but he misses her touch as soon as she does. “Would you think about it?” she asks shyly. And, well, he can’t refuse her that.

“Of course,” he says, smiling at her.

She giggles. “You’re a sweetheart, Chidi.”

He blinks at her. “Hegel,” he says, after a minute.

She turns her head, frowns at him. “Bless you?”

He laughs. “No, it’s—” He reaches over and picks up the book lying discarded next to him, holding it up to show her the cover. “Hegel wrote about the way we come to understand the world. We can’t understand the universe through our own eyes, not completely. We can only really _know_  things through the eyes of another.” He smiles at her, “Together.” It’s an awfully simplistic summary of Hegel, but Eleanor’s smiling back at him.

And, wow. When she smiles like that, really smiles, she’s so—beautiful.

“Through the eyes of another,” she echoes. She looks back at the little yellow house, its door open. They can hear Tahani singing inside. Eleanor’s smile gets wider, more thoughtful, as she hears it. “So, like how you love it when Tahani sings, and I find it so forking annoying I could come at her with the rusty edge of a tin can… but then I look at how you look at her when she sings, and I can maybe put up with it a bit longer?”

He laughs. “A bit like that.” He turns so he can look at her, hooking an arm over the back of the bench. “Eleanor,” he says suddenly, “would you be offended if I told you that you have a very beautiful soul?”

She blinks at him. “Dude,” she says. “I don’t know what you mean, but that sounds awesome. Flattered!” She claps him on the arm again, laughing, and he doesn’t flinch away.

Instead, he grabs her hand on top of his arm, and squeezes it.

On an Eleanor-typical whim, she reaches over, steadying herself with a hand on the surface of the bench, and… kisses him.

He pulls away in shock for a moment.

Her face falls. And he can’t have that. So he leans back in and kisses her back.

“Oh,” she says, when they pull apart again, in a tone of wonder.

Tahani chooses that moment to peek her head out through the front door. He hasn’t seen her yet this morning. She’s dressed in a yellow summer dress, impeccably stylish as always. _(And gorgeous,_  his treacherous mind adds, against his will.) “Am I missing anything, my dears?” she says, and Chidi could swear she’s trying to keep a wicked look off her face.

He pats the bench on the other side of him. “Would you sit, Tahani? Eleanor has an… extremely concerning proposal for us.”

“Delightful,” Eleanor corrects him. “It’s a delightful proposal.”

Tahani squeezes in between them, and they shuffle awkwardly around to make room. “Delight me,” she says, with a shy smile at Chidi and a wink at Eleanor.

 

  1. **Family**



Jason is bouncing on the bed with Eleanor.

Except, where she usually just sits and _boings_  up and down on her butt, like an over-excited child, now she and Jason are standing on the bed and jumping up with arms raised, trying to hit the ceiling, like over-excited _toddlers._

At last they collapse onto the bed, laughing, their limbs tangled around each other.

Eleanor pulls herself up into a sitting position and grins at Chidi and Tahani. “You know you want to,” she teases.

Jason agrees with her, apparently. “Aww, come on, dudes! It’s so much fun.” He starts bouncing again where he sits. “And after this we’re gonna play video games, and Eleanor says she’ll make popcorn—” He turns to Eleanor with an awed grin. “Are you the mom of the soulmate house? ‘Cause I think you would make an awesome mom.”

She scoffs and hits him with a pillow. “Oh please! I am not old enough to be the mom. I’m the moody teen of the house. And Tahani’s the cool teen, and Chidi’s…” She looks up at Chidi with a thoughtful little smile. “I guess he’s the kid who eats his lunch on his own ‘cause he can’t decide who to sit with.”

“Gee, thanks, Eleanor,” Chidi gripes back from the sofa, resisting the urge to pour his heart out and tell her that was in fact how he spent most lunchtimes during his childhood.

“Guyyyyys,” Jason says, smirking at the other two. “Don’t you wanna come hang out on this nice, big bed with us?”

Chidi stands up, staring doubtfully at the bed.

Eleanor comes to stand next to him. “I mean,” she says softly, with a teasing half smile that makes Chidi’s heart feel suddenly light, “it is a pretty big bed.”

“Three of us,” he says, tone still doubtful.

Appearing behind them, Tahani drapes an arm over each of them. “Four,” she corrects. She leans over to kiss Chidi’s cheek, her smile a little unsure. She’s been kissing Eleanor for days—Chidi’s not too proud to admit that they’re hot together—but she’s been almost shy around Chidi.

Now he smiles at her. The afterlife is too short to leave his soulmate unkissed. It’s a strange thought to cross his mind, since the afterlife probably isn’t short at all, but… that seems to be how he feels. And so, while her arm is still around Eleanor, he gives Tahani a returned peck on the lips.

And she smiles back, her eyes full of wonder. “Oh,” she says, while Eleanor grins next to her.

“Nice one, man,” she says, clapping Chidi on the arm.

“Bed,” Tahani says definitively, smiling under raised eyebrows.

They pile in, to complaints about bony elbows and strange sleeping positions and how Tahani is taking up far more of the bed than she needs to.

“We’re a family,” Jason says, out of nowhere, in a serious tone, as soon as they’ve all stopped whining.

“Because we argue like one?” Tahani asks. She’s curled up against a pillow like a cat, looking about as contented as one. Chidi wasn’t expecting that.

“Well, I sure like you all more than my own family,” Eleanor says, lying on her back looking at the ceiling. She’s smiling, but there’s the edge of sadness in her voice.

Tahani groans. “Oh god, me too.”

“Me three,” Jason agrees.

They all look at Chidi, right at the edge of the bed, trying not to take up too much space. He shrugs. “My family are fine.”

Three sets of eyes blink at him.

“You’re better,” he adds, to nods of approval all round (and a loud _whoop-whoop_  from Jason).

Tahani yawns. “Can we get some sleep now? It’s really very late, and Michael wants me to come to some sort of meeting tomorrow. I dread to think what it’s about. He’s been having me fill out all this paperwork recently. I didn’t think the afterlife would involve this much admin.”

There’s a bit more complaining while they all get comfortable, but it fades into steady breathing soon enough.

“Also,” says a sleepy Jason voice, “anytime you guys wanna have sex, just kick me out and put the clown screen down, and I’ll sleep on the couch. It’s all good.”

There’s a drawn-out, deeply uncomfortable silence from the other three.

All three of the others start talking at once.

“Well, now I _hardly_  think—”

“Oh, come _on,_  Jason, what do you think we’re—”

“Uh, that was kinda direct, wasn’t it, dude?”

Jason giggles and rolls over, at the far left edge of the bed. “Night-night, soulmates.”

Tahani stretches, still cat-like, and her arm curls surreptitiously around Eleanor's shoulders.

Chidi feels Eleanor freeze, briefly. Then he sees her reach up to peck a kiss on Tahani’s lips and curl against her.

At the right edge of the bed, Chidi is awkwardly still, for a minute.

Then he reaches out his hand, lacing his fingers into Eleanor’s.

She hums contentedly and wraps her fingers around his, squeezing his hand.

And, for the very first time, Chidi understands why they call it the Good Place. He really is in heaven.

A little later, Chidi’s on the precipice of sleep. That’s when Eleanor says, like an afterthought, “Oh, guys. Tomorrow you gotta help me with a thing.”

“Sure,” mumble three drowsy voices.

“Great,” Eleanor says, rolling over. “‘Cause I think I’ve realised I’m meant to be in the Bad Place. And, well, talk about a bit of a stumper.”

Chidi briefly considers sitting up and yelling “WHAT?!”

And then he decides against it. It’s so late, and the bed is so soft, and there’ll be time to solve all kinds of ridiculous problems in the morning.

They can deal with it together.

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to Hegel, of whose work I only have an *extremely* basic understanding.
> 
> Huge thanks to Thette for beta reading.


End file.
